Lonely at the top

MICHELLE DUGUID, an assistant professor of organisational behaviour at Washington University in St Louis, recently published a paper on the behaviour of women in high-profile corporate roles. It is often assumed that such high-fliers can act as mentors, bringing other women into similar positions. But Ms Duguid has a theory of “value threat”: that certain women, high-achieving but isolated, see others of their sex as a threat to their own special status, and therefore may not want to promote their female peers. One thinks of Becky Sharp in William Thackeray's novel “Vanity Fair” (pictured, as played by Reese Witherspoon in a film adaptation), who regarded all other women, even her best friend and her husband's sisters, as potential romantic or financial rivals. (This is something also observed by Israeli professors, albeit at a more junior level, when they found female human resources staff were denying pretty job applicants an interview.)

Value threat can play out in three ways, Ms Duguid suggests. First, the higher-ranking woman (let's call her Becky) might see the lower-ranking woman (Amelia) as potentially performing worse and thus reinforcing negative views of women, thereby hurting Becky's own standing. Second, Becky might fear that there is only one slot available for a woman, and Amelia will take it. Third, Becky might fear being accused of favouring Amelia over her male colleagues.

Ms Duguid's three experiments included assigning female college students to (made-up) committees, then asking them if they wanted to include one more candidate, with one male and one female profile suggested. If the student was told she was the only woman on the committee so far, she was less likely to choose the female candidate and more likely to report feeling nervous about the female candidate, regardless of whether the hypothetical profile's qualifications were better or worse than her own. Students told that the majority of the committee membership were women, on the other hand, showed more interest in the female profile.

But in two of the experiments, the participants were told their committees were either of high or low prestige: headed either by the dean of the college or a student researcher. Students assigned to the low-prestige committees were, again, less nervous, on average, about choosing a female participant. Value threat seems to increase as the power and prestige of the job increases.

In a second paper, Ms Duguid and her co-authors, Denise Lewin Lloyd of MIT Sloan and Pamela Tolbert of Cornell University, discuss the potential consequences of value threat. (They also discuss value threat more broadly, to apply to members of ethnic minorities as well as women.) If the token woman is given the task of bringing in more women, she may balk, and the majority might assume that the other female candidates aren't qualified.

The authors' suggestions include reinforcing networking efforts among lower-ranking employees, so they can help each other as they work their way up the ladder, and spreading the responsibility for recognising and promoting talented minority employees. The more alone the token success feels, the more likely value threat is to occur, they imply. This was something understood well by Thackeray. He made his anti-heroine an orphan.

This is ridiculous i never thought women were like this are they really as competitive as shown in Black Swan if i'm so worried now.
Why does threat increase when they get more prestige and status are they afraid of losing it to someone else this doesn't make sense another woman can't replace another's talents they will still get recognition for their own work.
This is disgusting why are they afraid of other women gaining self actualisation by achieving her own goals.
Also there are some women who don't accept advice which makes them difficult to train however they tend to be self sufficient anyway.
Why are they threatened by other women for don't they know they have different goals anyway.

Being a female "token" manager beginning in 1972 at $15,000 per Annam,working my way up the ladder and through the glass ceiling in corporate America to the position of Corporate Director with an annual income of over $200,000 in 1993. I can attest that it is lonely at the top. However, my experience was the same rivalry from men as from women rather than "value threat," as surmised by Ms Duguid and her co-authors, Denise Lewin Lloyd of MIT Sloan and Pamela Tolbert of Cornell.

For those of us in management in the 1970s there were no female role models for us to emulate, thus, just as the men did, we jockeyed for the person in power to mentor us. Our competition were all male.

By the 1990s more women were in management; my observation, competition was fierce and raw. However it was also fierce and raw amongst the men. I saw it as a new generations ethics.

Rather than basing her research and findings in a collegiate setting, I'd like to suggest she actually study the behavior of women now holding or who have held corporate positions.

"Ms Duguid has a theory of “value threat”: that certain women, high-achieving but isolated, see others of their sex as a threat to their own special status, and therefore may not want to promote their female peers."

I suggest to the contrary in corporate America, an executive who took this stance would not last very long. It behooves she or he to find, hire, promote and retain the very best regardless of sex,race or creed, in order to succeed herself/himself. A mediocre staff speaks poorly of the department head,

I've known many women executives in corporate America who spent and spend countless hours mentoring others, grooming them for promotion. Perhaps it is not so in a collegiate environment in which case this study and these conclusions, perhaps should be restricted to that environment rather than corporate America.

Thank you very much for this article. As a woman working for a woman, it helps me understand why I have been struggling all this time, at 1st, I thought I had to be more assertive, stand my ground and when that didn't work, I thought I had to be more friendly, that didn't work either then finally I felt I wasn't good enough in spite of my outstanding past work experience but I was at that stage when I read your article. Unfortunately, in future positions, I will always prefer working with men..

of course you will hun.a female boss just doesnt want your body and so she will never go easy on you.You actually have to perform your work related duties when your boss is not interested in you like THAT

As someone who works with senior women and mentors women globally this has not been my experience. The women I know and work with are mentoring young women, networking with women, sponsoring women, promoting women, investing in women led businesses and recommending women for corporate board positions. Based on this paper, we may need to help female college students not be nervous to make decisions based on meritocracy and I agree we should help reinforce networking efforts. Perpetuating the stereotype that women don't help women is not helpful.

My experience of successful women is they are aggressive, often as a form of defence. It seems they need to be to overcome the prejudices against them.
No doubt there are exceptions. I don't think my observations are bias...buy I would say that, wouldn't I?

Some interesting observations. I believe it is also important to understand what drives females at the top. In some cases it could be that due to less females being at the top in general, this could be a driver that needs to apply at all costs. High achievers, like us all, are driven by unique needs and getting to the heart of this can lead to even more understanding.

Madeleine Albright said “There is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

I heard that at a graduation ceremony at University of Southern California (USC) the other day counting 8 women for every man that walked across that stage. If you toss out half of the men as foreign nationals, the imbalance is staggering and no one talks about what kind of bias must be creating this situation in the first place in the United States.

We are now past looking for gender equality and are now in full gender bias against men. Do we wait for women to be 90% of the graduates and have a 10 to 1 advantage before we stop and look at the situation?

Most do not recognize that to tell men not to help other men while telling women to do the opposite is not good for society as a whole. This will get far worse before it gets better.

A team of ten men and one woman is regularly more cohesive, dynamic and productive than a team of eleven men... The woman acts as a kind of mascot galvanising the men and spurring them on... like Margaret Thatcher and all the great women in history

That is about the only legitimate place for women in upper management... otherwise they are so much dead wood... AND THEY KNOW IT!

Women were only introduced into the workforce to nobble the alpha males for the gratification of the runt males WHO LOVE TO HIDE BEHIND WOMEN

MEN COMPETE WITH MEN FOR WOMEN, the winners getting the women and passing on their superior genes... MEN WORK FOR WOMEN

How can women expect 'equality' in that scheme? Feminists fight men for themselves... They work to be INDEPENDENT of men... unavailable and sterile... What's the point of that?

Judging from these two studies, women themselves are beginning to realise how problematic is their presence in the workforce

I do feel that male colleagues judge me for promoting other females in my male dominated workplace. It's the responsibility of every employee to be aware of all personal biases if they are a good quality employee. My decisions are based on merit. Other people's biases or judgements are their own problem.

Sex bias is a major issue in the workplace, but frankly, I believe that race bias is a much bigger issue in my country.

"Ms Duguid’s three experiments included assigning female college students to (made-up) committees, then asking them if they wanted to include one more candidate, with one male and one female profile suggested. If the student was told she was the only woman on the committee so far, she was less likely to choose the female candidate and more likely to report feeling nervous about the female candidate, regardless of whether the hypothetical profile’s qualifications were better or worse than her own. Students told that the majority of the committee membership were women, on the other hand, showed more interest in the female profile."

Is this not simply majority wheighing in on the choices of the committee member? As a member of the committee, one (whether male or female or from a ethnic minority) would be less likely to include someone different from the majority, just to avoid being seen as furthering an agenda or even simply just damaging the nice uniformity. Hence the fact that the student in a female-dominated committee would be considering the female candidate as more interesting.

Not sure whether the research paper substantiates this better but here it could just be reproduction at play: whoever one is, one chooses someone like the majority of members of the committee.

"Value threat seems to increase as the power and prestige of the job increases."
Well, duh, how surprising is that? And further:
"The more alone the token success feels, the more likely value threat is to occur"
Which is to say, value threat is directly related to the small number of such positions of "power and prestige" that are available to women thanks, largely, to the prevalence of the old boys' club.
But that's bound to change, to the dinosaurs' dismay, as more women graduate from college than men. In just the same way that value threat in the romantic arena diminished as women found they had other options than hooking a mate and popping out babies.
All in all, an only moderately useful study.

I thought this article was about the bias of women against women. Shouldn't your post have read "And yet another reason why female managers/leaders need to be sensitive to bias, open to developing people and aggressive with opportunities provided to those from a broad, diverse spectrum." Or better yet, just managers in general.

Merely a singular call by me for men in power positions to share in the responsibility of addressing gender-bias, especially in its more subtle forms. Nothing more, nothing less. I have no experience speaking as a female manager.